Total legal spend declines as companies grow, and seven more possible reasons why

Size matters, and the size of a company as measured by revenue affects its ratio of total legal spending to that revenue. That key ratio, total legal spending (TLS), made up of inside law-department spend plus the department’s external spend – declines the bigger companies become. Why?

An article of mine several years ago proposed a number of reasons for this phenomenon, and I published a metapost about total legal spending (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: why TLS declines with size; March 22, 2010: odd trend, because bigger companies use bigger law firms; and Aug. 21, 2008: total legal spend as percent of revenue with 9 references and one metapost.).